NEW YORK, Aug. 4, 2025—Four New York City high school students worked for CulinArt at the United Nations this summer as part of a four-week job experience program in partnership with the Lighthouse Guild, a not-for-profit organization that supports people who are visually impaired, and the New York City Department of Education’s Educational Vision Services program, which supports students with vision, orientation, and mobility services.

The students worked five-hour shifts, three days a week, in a UN dining facility under the tutelage of a CulinArt chef or manager. Two students were assigned to a high-volume production kitchen, which produces food for sale in up to seven service points, while two were assigned to one of those service points—Café Vienna, a coffee bar with a wide variety of hot and cold beverages and grab-and-go foods.

The effort involved several parties collaborating toward a common goal:

• DOE’s EVS works with students to ascertain their skills, interests, and career goals.
• Lighthouse Guild seeks and identifies opportunities for those students through its Pathways Program, which equips participants with essential skills to become confident, independent, and career-ready young adults. The Guild works with employers in multiple industries around the city, seeking partners who share its goal of “providing meaningful work experience for young people who are visually impaired.” The Guild covers all costs (wages, benefits, Workers Comp) and even provides coaches who accompany the students to their job sites as a support resource if needed.
• As one of the Guild’s employer partners, CulinArt considered potential locations for students to experience their employment, settling on the UN in the summer of 2024 (click here for related story) and targeting this summer for the actual student employment to begin.

Peter Klein, CulinArt’s director of culinary development, is the catalyst for the program, having created, with his husband, Mike O’Brien, a non-profit organization focused on providing visually impaired students with employment opportunities. “We call it ‘The 70% Project,’” Klein says, “as 70 percent of visually impaired high school students remain unemployed upon graduation mainly because of businesses’ hesitancy to hire them.”

The pair leveraged O’Brien’s connections with EVS and the Lighthouse Guild with Klein’s involvement with CulinArt’s management of dining services at the UN, to pursue their goals of “giving these students an opportunity to have meaningful job experiences in the hospitality industry,” Klein adds, “that may result in some choosing the field as a career upon graduation—and to give greater visibility and understanding to this underserved community.”

Training activities covered job responsibilities, food safety and handling, uniforms and dress code (e.g., non-slip shoes, no jewelry), hygiene, and work schedule. In the kitchen, the two workers are doing prep and production work (such as preparing sandwiches, salads, and parfaits while learning sanitation skills), while the pair assigned to Café Vienna are stocking coolers, prepping food and beverages, and training on registers. When not at the UN, the four budding culinarians attend sessions at the Lighthouse Guild headquarters acquiring additional life skills.

“We want to give them a foundational job experience in the food service industry,” Klein notes, “which most visually impaired students do not get the opportunity to do. This includes the ongoing support from myself, our management and team members, EVS team members, the UN and our client liaisons, and the Lighthouse Guild’s training program and trained job coaches.”

Almost immediately, the students made positive contributions to the UN program and lent valuable support to the CulinArt UN team members. “It is always good having extra helping hands,” says Marvin Bustamante, general manager. “At Café Vienna, the students handled tasks such as replenishing condiments or selecting pastries for customers, so the barista could concentrate on making drinks. And during a week in which the UN hosted a high-level political forum requiring extra production, the two workers assigned to the kitchen proved especially helpful.”

CulinArt gave each student own Certificate of Completion in Braille, at a graduation ceremony held at the UN in late July. It remains to be seen whether the EVS students will pursue a career in the culinary arts, though one student who just graduated high school will be attending the Culinary Institute of America this fall.